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News Round Jan. 29- Feb 5 2012

Disclaimer: News may not be in any specific chronological and/or thematic order)
-So we got a bit more info about the storyline for the next "One Piece"
film, set to be released in Japanese theaters this December. As quoted
from AnimeNewsNetwork.com:

"The film will feature the Straw Hat
pirate crew against their "strongest enemy yet," a man named "Z." Toei
officials added that in the film the franchise's protagonist Monkey D.
Luffy will encounter Z, but he will be Luffy's strongest enemy. The
movie will feature a "heroic battle" between Luffy and Z."<br><br>ANN
states that this movie will be directed by Tatsuya Nagamine, who
according to the site was the director of the Alabasta film. If you
check their encyclopedia profile for Tatsuya however, it shows that he
was just the assistant director:

-ICv2 posted the Nielsen Bookscan list for January 2012. This list shows
the top 20 best-selling adult (well according to them adult) graphic
novels in American bookstores. "One Piece" #60 came in at 15th place:

-Here's a cool "One Piece" promotion. Last Friday, on the website for
the upcoming "One Piece" art exhibit (if anyone reading this isn't in
the loop on that the ANN source will fill you in), they put up this
wanted poster maker. Users can basically use the Wanted poster template
to put up a personal photo/image and nickname. Along with that, there's
also a "Today's Wanted" feature, which allows people who purchased a
ticket for the exhibit a chance to have their custom poster exhibited at
the show. The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun will also hold an
"Everyone's Wanted" campaign, in which selected custom wanted posters
will be featured in their March 20th issue:

-This April, late April to be exact, the Straw Hat crew will be taking over your chess table. The Japanese company Megahobby announced on Tuesday that they will be reviving their popular Chess Piece Collection after almost a decade. Starting with the "One Piece" anime, Megahobby is launching their Chess Piece Collection R project.

Each
chess piece, which are themed after each Straw Hat crew member except
Robin, Franky, and Brooke (sorry guys, but chess rules follow a very
specific system of six types of pieces), measures about 9.5 millimeters
(about 3.5 inches) tall. A randomly distributed, blind-boxed "One Piece"
chess figure costs 683 yen (about $9 with tax included):

Last Friday, Shueisha shipped out the 65th volume of "One Piece" with a
first-print run of four million copies. This ties with the previous
volume's first-print run last November, which set a record for most
copies produced for a book's first-print run in Japan:

To
me this isn't big news like with the last several volumes actually
setting records for both the series and books as a whole, however it's
still quite newsworthy since in my mind it sets a cap for what to expect
for future volumes' first printings.

- For the week of January
23rd to the 29th, "One Piece" was the fourth highest-rated anime on
Japanese T.V. It scored an average household rating of 10.6%:

-Some new magazine scans (which are not featured in this source) have
confirmed more info about the upcoming PS3 game "One Piece": Pirate
Warriors". Brooke is playable, which we all saw coming, but you'll also
be able to play as Boa Hancock, Whitebeard, and Portgas D. Ace. I don't
know if I posted it last time, but I also got a second promotional
trailer here that goes through Alabasta and Enies Lobby:

-Last Monday, Crunchyroll posted a lengthy interview with Senior Vice
President and General Manager of VIZ Media, Alvin Lu, about Weekly
Shonen Jump Alpha. Topics in the article range from how manga business
is doing on the digital side to how customers might be dealing with the
transition from print to digital magazine. Along with the interview,
there are quite some juicy details about what to expect in Alpha in the
coming months, some of which are directly "One Piece" related. Among
them are:

- A hyperlink feature in the works
- An interview with Eiichiro Oda in March
- Video content for subscribers (perhaps we'll see some behind-the-scenes action with Oda? Keeping my&nbsp;&nbsp; fingers crossed...)
- One-shot stories for subscribers, including the "One Piece X Toriko" crossover which we'll see in the March-April timeline
- On top of that, Shonen Jump meet-ups at conventions like Wondercon and Sakuracon. Great way to give WSJ Alpha feedback!

In each commercial, you'll hear Luffy's dub voice per their respective country of origin.

-For the week of February 2nd, "Kaizoku Musou" was the 5th most-wanted game on Japanese video-game magazine Famitsu's most-wanted game list, as voted by reader. It got 400 votes, and fell from a previous ranking of 3rd place:

-Finally, we have a series of misunderstandings concerning Spain's dub
of "One Piece". Boing is going to start airing new episodes in the Water
7 saga, but on Friday Arait Multimedia, the
licensing/distributing/production company of the Spanish, put up a video
revealing they have 52 new episodes of "One Piece" and own up to
episode 394:

The
Facebook page for Arait refused to anything more on their Facebook
page, and Jaime Roca (dub directore and voice of Luffy), as well as one
of the translators, Alessandra Moura, seemed to be unaware of these new
episodes.

Turns out Arait isn't dubbing those new episodes yet,
they just have the rights to them. They've dubbed up to episode 263, and
starting on the 13th of this month they're going to start airing from
229 onwards. In addition, all the speculation was clarified by an Arait
representative on the popular Ramen Para Dos website's podcast. Turns
out they have 406 episodes licensed, and have dubbed 263 of them. Turns
out that video was just a promotional company ad for companies. You can
find more info on the One Piece RETURNS TO SPAIN! thread thanks to
fogdark (posts #93 to #96) as well as the One Piece en Castellano
Facebook page: